Donations

Hey guys -

I'd just like to bring up a quick point here regarding donations. As you all may know, all of the administrative staff invests a lot of time into running the iO community as well as its servers. However, you may not know that iO also invests a lot of resources into keeping this community running (and by resources I mean money). As of lately the donations have been really poor, barely even covering 3/8's the total costs to run the community. Although this is ok and we understood the obligations that we took on when we started the community, but it would severely lighten the financial burden on the iO staff if even 22% of the iO's user base would spare a mere $5-$6/monthly recurring donation and would allow the 3 administrative staff (Mar, Shocker and myself) to put the $200-$300 we are spending on running costs towards prizes and whatever else. For example, despite the current donation situation, Shocker this month has ordered some very nice dome stickers ($200 worth) to give out for free on top of what he put in for the community this month. We'd like to do more things like this, but to do so we must get more donations in.

Very recently members of the TF2 community came to us asking what cost it would be to get up a 5th 32 man TF2 server, which we'd love to do for you guys. However the resource usage on our current box seems to becoming more and more intense each day and in our opinion won't allow this. With an increase in donations, we possibly can purchase another box to expand the community but right now the donation situation is not allowing this.

I don't want this to sound like a rant thread because it's not and I know a lot of you have donated before and I'd like everyone to take a second and look at the long list of very generous donors and people who truly care about the success of the community here: http://iogaming.net/forums/announcement.php?f=26&a=3

In closing, I'd like to ask if you can spare a recurring $5-6/month (about $.17/day) please do so as the whole community will benefit. Keep in mind that you do not need a paypal account to donate. If you need any assistance setting up a recurring donation don't hesitate to ask.